Total Distortion is a really, really hard game to describe. Shit, even the idea is difficult to explain!
Let's start with this - Do you know who Joe Sparks is? He's the mad genius behind The Radiskull and Devil Doll Shockwave movies around the infant days of the Internet while he worked as an employee of Macromedia itself. A visual artist as well as a voice actor, singer, and guitarist, he was involved in lots of oddball projects. None of them could ever top his own company's 1995 mashup of a title, "Total Distortion," though.
A mix of point and click adventure, puzzle, and music games, it was not known for being a well-made game or one that was highly enjoyable to play.
However, it continues to this day to be one of the most hardcore independent, quirky, and unique titles ever created, and Joe's humor and trademark "talent like no one's listening" style is oozing with every track and skit you hear. Something tells me that playing this game and listening to the music within is a lot like jumping past his cowboy hat and directly into his twisted brain.
Please note: The quality of audio is notoriously low. At the time of the game, high quality encoding was not a standard. I talked to Joe about this, and he says the entire game was composed with converted 22k audio! Most of the original studio recordings have been completely lost, but he says there is a tape somewhere with a good amount of songs on them. I hope he's able to track it down eventually!
